July 3rd was the fifth anniversary of my Husband Derrick’s death. That same day, I find 
that my little sister Kellie has blood clots in her lungs and is in ICU. Two of my absolute favorite people. Damn it. Derrick was the love of my life. I think about him every day. Not a day goes by where I don’t think of him, laugh, smile, shed a tear. My little sister, my best friend, keeper of all my secrets. Come on.
I went to Cleveland. Things were bad. They got worse. I wondered at one point if we would lose her. I could not bear the thought. How could someone else I love be taken from me? The list is quite lengthy for someone my age. I stayed for five days. She got better, then worse, then better. She got to leave the ICU the same evening I went home. Here in the next couple of days she will go to a rehab hospital. She does not want it, but knows she needs it. Besides the blood clots, she had pneumonia and was septic. Lots of things to recover from. The picture was from Las Vegas. Derrick was playing in a pool tournament and Kellie and I needed an excuse to go to Las Vegas. It was fun. The best time with two of my favorite people.
This is my fall quilt along block. I was done before I left for Cleveland, but never got to post it. I had issues. It does not look right. I don’t know where I went wrong, but I am convinced the instructions did not match the example. If you look at the top row and then the bottom example, they do not match (or I am crazy. Either is possible) . The one time I attempt to actually follow instruction and look what happens. It is going to stay ugly for the time being.
One of my sewing machines is down. Of course, it is the one in the cabinet that I quilt with. I will try to drop it off this weekend. Broke a needle and it kept making a weird noise. I guess a piece could be stuck somewhere. It needed cleaned anyway. No quilting for me for now. I will just have to work on piecing.
With all my personal craziness, I did not enter anything into the One Monthly Goal. ☹. Next month, maybe things will get back to normal. A girl can hope.
Happy Sewing
Happy Quilting
Treasure your Family
the sea collection. This month we have a whale. I do have to tell you, my last months post brought some criticism form some Facebook followers (my sister mostly). She insisted that my seahorses were farting. I tried to explain that it was meant to be swirls of water, but no, according to her it was pretty clear. Farting Seahorses. Now I 
look at my seahorses in a little different light. Darn it.
call it the outside curve, on the bottom and sewing it like that works best. So, my outside curve (with the outside arch) was on the bottom. My photo shows it with the outside curve on top, so you can see it, but when I pin and sew, I flip it over so it is on the bottom
sent me some wonderful batik scraps. I used some to make the applique on this block. I had mentioned that I was going to be using batik scraps with my background fabric. She sent me some other lovely items, that I will show later as I complete them. She is one of the kindest people I know and it certainly brought a smile to my face. It has already proven to be a very valuable resource.
my backyard (about an hour or so away). The went over how they design their fabrics and had a slide show of how they are made. They even make the white fabric. IT was fascinating. I knew how they were made, but watching the slide show filled in a few gaps. Then they brought stuff to sell, and surprisingly it was very reasonable. I bought a 4 yard bag of blue scraps for $15.00 (this is the pile after I washed and ironed them). There were no little tiny pieces. I have already cut them all up for a blue batik scrap quilt. More on that later.
When I purchased the fabric, I though it was grey. However, when I received, it was sort of a light green/grey. I had one thing in mind and then had to change gears when I actually got the fabric. So, I went into my stash and decided to use my weird batik. Not sure why I call these my weird batiks, They just struck me as odd, not in a bad way. So, Here is what I started with to get to my block. This block is about 6 1/2 inches square, so I will need quite a few.
So, not tons of progress here…..but some. The Dog Bone dresser runner is at about 38″. i think it will never end and since I need it to be 54″, it may not.
about 24 1/2 half of them completed. I have no idea how many of the I actually need. I thought I was going to get a lot done today at the swim meet, but ended up not even finishing one. Too many distractions. I really need to get more of both my hand projects done.
As I go through the many many boxes of miscellaneous quilt boxes (like it’s Christmas for me). I am coming across projects that I started and never finished for whatever reason.
I made this table runner for my own table. I usually don’t make much for myself, but it seems odd to be a quilter and not have quilted stuff all over your house. It is an interesting batik and I was not appalled at my quilting this time. When I did the quilting, I was sort of thinking/going for snow drifts. It came out all right.
QuiltingNeeds.com 